Fastnet Race Day Four 1800 - They really should think of some word other than "calm" to describe the situation in an offshore race when the wind falls away after a period of brisk breezes. "Calm" suggests quiet serenity, yet the sail trimming and particularly the helming required in light airs in a lumpy leftover sea would test the patience of a saint, and 'tis far from saintliness most sailors were raised.

In fact, the hyper-sensitivities can be raised to such an extent that in the old days, longtime offshore racers would claim that in rolling about and pitching up and down, they could tell the difference between the hidden clinking from the galley cupboard of a jar of Bovril and a jar of Marmite. This was when such items were considered essential to maintaining crew spirits, the mug of hot Bovril with a pat of butter well seasoned with freshly-ground pepper in the mix, with maybe a dash of whiskey, being considered essential to morale in that damp dead hour before dawn, even if some of the more delicate of those to whom this witch's brew of a pick-me-up was administered had duly thrown it up within five minutes.

Fortunately, today (Tuesday's) light airs afflicting the bulk of the mid-sized boats in the 50th Fastnet Race will be gone tomorrow in the face of a sou'wester coming in ahead of a dithering low-pressure area, which almost moved steadily like a grown-up weather systemon over Ireland today, but then went round itself, so to speak, and is slowly coming back for another bite of the cherry through Wednesday.

The hotshot biggies already in Cherbourg care little about it all this other than the fact that it makes their performances look even better.

But meanwhile, among those trying to stay ahead of the softer patch, the performance of the Fournier family from France with their J/133 Pintia has been little short of sensational.

Gilles Fournier & Corinne Migraine were the overall IRC winners of the RORC Cervantes Trophy Race in May on the J/133 Pintia (FRA) from the Société des Regatés du Havre. This was the fourth occasion that the French team won the impressive Cervantes Trophy and now they are in the running for overall honours in the final stages of the Fastnet Race Photo: David Sheridan

Defending champion Tom Kneen with the JPK 11.80 Sunrise III had been hunting Pintia down like a hungry hound as they came back in from the Rock, but in the end was reduced to the gambit of going west of the TSS to the southwestward of the Isles of Scilly while Pintia left it to starboard. Yet lo and behold, even though they'd been 20 miles apart at the widest dividing of the ways, when they closed in again towards the Bishop Rock, Pintia was still in front and going so well that she fits into 7th overall in IRC1 when set against the TP52s already finished.

Defending champion Tom Kneen with the JPK 11.80 Sunrise III rounds the Fastnet Rock Photo: David Sheridan

Meanwhile, Andrew and Sam Hall from Pwllheli with the Lombard 45 Pata Negra chose to go slowly but surely so far southwest in search of the promised incoming breeze that, at one stage, they looked like the were sailing off the edge of the known world. But when they came back in towards the bulk of the slow-moving fleet, they were still neck-and-neck with Robert Rendell's Grand Soleil 44 Samatom from Howtk, with both of them around the 15th mark in IRC 1.

Quite how much wind they'll all get tomorrow (Wednesday), and when, is in the lap of the Gods. But it looks as if this currently slow-paced near-melodrama will run into at last five acts before the curtain is run down.